Many security documents contain a picture of the owner of the document. For example, a driver's license generally includes a picture of the driver and a passport generally includes a picture of the owner of the passport. Validation of such documents is performed by comparing the actual physical appearance of the person possessing the document to the picture on the document. A common counterfeiting technique involves replacing the picture on a security document with a picture of someone who is not the owner of the document.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,841,886 which will issue Nov. 24, 1998 describes a technique whereby a digital watermark is included in the picture on a security document. The security document contains human readable text that is related to the data contained in the watermark. The document can be inserted into a scanner which will read the watermark and the operator can compare the output of watermark reader to the text to insure that the person possessing the document is the legitimate owner.
Custom printing systems are available which accept data from multiple sources and which produce documents which are tailored to individual customer characteristics or to information concerning an individual customer. Such systems can for example produce personalized documents that include both fixed information that is on each document that is printed and variable information such as personal information about an individual's account at an institution such as a bank. One such system is commercially marketed under the trademark “PageFlex” by Bitstream Inc. or Cambridge Mass.
Likewise the technology for producing images which contain steganographic information in the form of digital watermarks is well developed. For example see U.S. Pat. No. 5,636,292, U.S. Pat. No. 5,748,783 or the “Communications of the ACM” published July 1998 Vol. 41. No. 7 pages 31 to 77. Commercial products which can store and read digital watermarks are also widely available. Examples of such products include “Adobe PhotoShop” Versions 4.0 and 5.0 and “Adobe ImageReady” Version 1.0 which are marketed by Adobe Corporation, “CorelDRAW” Versions 7 and 8, and “Corel PHOTO-PAINT” Versions 7 and 8 which are marketed by Corel Corporation, and Micrografx Webtricity” Versions 1 and 2, “Micrografx Graphics Suite 2”, and “Micrografx Picture Publisher” Versions 7 and 8 which are marketed by Micrografx Corporation.
Security documents such as passports and drivers licenses have traditionally contained both images and printed text. However, the images and the text in such documents are generally prepared in separate processes and merely merged at a final step in the overall production.
The present invention is directed to an improved security document which has several correlated multi-level self validating features. The present invention is also directed to an improved overall method and system for producing security documents and to automatic authentication systems for such documents. With the present invention the document contains a number of different kinds of information that is hidden from normal view and which can be correlated to validate the document. The validation can be done entirely automatically decreasing the need for human intervention.
With the prior art systems, a human being such as an immigration officer must examine a passport to determine if the person presenting the document is the rightful owner of the document. With the present invention, the authentication can be done entirely automatically, leaving the human operator free to handle non-routine situations.